Puppets. Misery, collaboration, epic stories.

Palermo had dozens of puppet theaters before 1950, when interest began to decline. Today, there are only three left, each employing the handmade marionettes—three feet tall and weighing 20 pounds—unique to the city’s puppetry tradition. While puppetry inspired by regional epics crops up across cultures, from ancient India’s Ramayana and Mahabharata to Japan’s Tales of the Heike, “only Sicilian Opera dei Pupi stages epic stories with intricately structured and painted wooden puppets, in elaborate metal armor with swords and shields made to withstand heavy fighting,” says Columbia University professor Jo Ann Cavallo.

People tend to know what makes them angry with more certainty than what might make them happy. Happiness is complicated because you keep moving the goalposts. Misery is more durable. …an insatiable appetite for more will always push you to the point of disappointment and regret – always, every single time. So having some ability to deny an extra dollar of work, or a potential opportunity, a bigger house or a nicer car, is essential if you want to use money to make a better life.

It’s the Slack channels, team spaces, emails, Zoom calls, maybe a gratitude application, plus one or two other custom things that people are doing in their organizations. All these technologies look cheap from the chief investment officer’s office, but layering them on creates a phenomenal “overwhelm.”